Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Five awesome things about my French kitchen

1. My hot pink mixer. Boom:

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2. French eggs. The yolks are NEON ORANGE (not sure if you can see it from this photo).  The eggs are all small production -- no factory farming here. It's crazy to see what "natural" eggs look like in comparison to what we use in the US.

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3. The ginormous chocolate tempering machine. At JWU, we'd spend hours tempering chocolate, getting it to the perfect temperature and consistency so that it would set up correctly.  Here, we have a giant churning hot tub of chocolate with a continuous stream of chocolate. The chocolate is always ready to work with, pleasantly splashing in the background as we work.  It's like Willy Wonka and I sort of want to stick my face under it.

 

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4. Our tool kits. Since traveling with a suitcase full of knives is not advisable, the school is lending us toolkits for our 2 month stay. Uh, they're gigantic. I feel like an assassin! Every tool kit comes with a scale, a rolling pin, and other huge items. It puts my real knife kit to shame (but is far more unwieldy).

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5. The view. I mean, seriously. I don't know if you can see out the window, but there's a big mountain there. We get a nice breeze as we're cooking. It's so incredibly scenic that it kind of feels like pastry camp, like after class we'll all go hop in a canoe or hike up the mountain. Also, in case you were worried, we have a very sophisticated fly electrocution system. I thought it was an air conditioner, but it's really a big glowing box mounted above the door that draws flies in and then fries them. Delish.

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Those are a few snapshots from our first day. I'll post some pictures of the products we made later. My legs feel like I've just run a marathon! I will certainly sleep well tonight.

2 comments:

  1. This is awesome, Alice! I am so impressed. And jealous of your pink mixer!

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